Day Seven – Monday 21st September

I got up at 9.30am. Denise phoned the bus company and found out that the bus was not until 2.30pm. So, as I wanted to get some CDs and gifts we decided to go out to the mall. Before that, I lounged about some more and watched the Bill Clinton tape on TV. It was him testifying to the grand jury about what he’d gotten up to with Ms. Lewinsky. He came across to me as just some guy who was a bit fed up with being asked probing questions. I don’t think he lied – he just used a flawed definition of ‘sexual relations’ to his advantage. The TV company kept putting a little caption up that said something like "Warning – this broadcast contains language of an explicit nature" whenever anyone said "oral sex." It was quite funny.

We drove out to a big out of town music and video store called Media-Mart. I bought an Eagles CD, and Neil Young’s Harvest which pleased Denise as Neil Young is one of her favourites. Steve had played various Neil Young CDs over the weekend and it's very American music and exactly the sort of thing I was in the mood for listening to on a long bus ride. It also cost a bargain $10.99, which comes out at around £6.90 – an unheard of price for a CD in the UK. Even the most expensive CDs I saw were $18 / £11.50, which is about as cheap as the most bargain CDs are back home. We went to the Mall and I bought some gifts (which will remain un-described lest the people they are for should read this!)

Even after that we were still too early for the bus so we went back home for lunch. Steve came back from Philadelphia and I said goodbye to him again before Denise drove me to the bus station. I said goodbye and promised that I would come back as soon as possible – which I will!

The bus ride back was a bit better than the one there. It still went all around the houses (King of Prussia, Philly, Mt Laurel and Newark) but I got a double seat to myself and we didn’t have to change buses like the last time. I listened to my CDs and found New Jersey 101.5 on the radio again where this time the phone in was about whether or not Bill Clinton should be forgiven. The presenters were clearly of the opinion that he deserved everything he got.

I got back to the youth hostel at about 9pm, and got some food from the pizza place across the road. Then I made use of the Internet booth in the hostel library to send an email postcard to all the people whose addresses I could remember, before showering and going to bed.

Day Eight – Tuesday 22nd September

I got up at 10am with no particular plan in mind. I had remembered that I was supposed to phone the airline and "re-confirm" my return flight – so I gathered up the appropriate bits of paper and my calling card and went in search of a phone. The apparently simple task of making a phone call took me over an hour. The first phone I tried refused to dial the number for the calling card company. I tried calling the operator who couldn’t really help me, so then I tried calling toll free directory enquiries (which I figured out from what was written on the phone must be on 1-800-555-1212) and they gave me a number for Air India which turned out to be either a fax machine or a modem. In the end I went up to the fourth floor and tried the phone that I had used my calling card on before the weekend to call Steve. Unbelievably, it worked. But the Air India number was engaged. This wasn’t much fun as each attempt involved dialling about 50 digits, and about 2 out of three times I mis-dialled which resulted in me getting more and more stressed until I just couldn’t dial the phone at all. So I gave up. How important could it be to "re-confirm" your flight anyway? What was that all about?

The Village

Not really a village, but kind of quaint all the same

This really is the building where Chandler and Joey liveI decided to go for a walk around Greenwich Village and the surrounding area. My feet had healed up over the weekend so I was up to a bit of walking. I looked on my trusty pop-out map and found where Grove and Bedford Streets intersected. I had found out on the Internet that this is where the building used for the exterior shots in Friends is. I got on the subway to Christopher Street and walked around. The Village is very picturesque with its narrow streets and quaint old buildings. I found the Friends building (which was smaller than I thought it would be) and also The Village Chess Shop from which I had intended to buy a gift for one of my chess playing friends but which turned out to sell mainly very expensive ($100s) chess sets. On the way there I had seen some nice looking Italian restaurants and vowed that next time I came here it would be with someone else so that I could try out some of these places without being socially un-acceptable and eating alone! In the end I found a little pizza place called Pizza Box and got a very cheap (and very tasty) pizza meal which I ate out in their back garden whilst reading a copy of the New York Times.

Suddenly I walked into a hole in the fabric of space - and awoke to find myself in the middle of Italy!I left Greenwich Village, walked to Washington Square Park, and then headed down Broadway. There were distinct feels to the different neighbourhoods. On my way I skirted the East Village, walked through Soho and almost made it into TriBeCa before I turned onto Canal Street. Here must have been the boundary between Chinatown and Little Italy. There were lots of little shops market stands selling T-shirts and watches and tourist fodder, and Chinese run electronics stores, and then I turned into Mulberry Street and suddenly everything went Italian. I had read that the Feast of San Gennaro was on this time of year – but I must have missed it because although the streets were decorated there were no street stalls and no carnival. I continued up Broadway, browsed in a few shops and generally wandered around, before heading back to the hostel.

The Magic of IMAX

I decided to go and see an IMAX film that night, so I got on the subway to the Sony IMAX Theatre at Broadway and 68th St. I got a ticket from the automatic ticket dispensing machine and made my way up the six or seven really high escalators to the IMAX screen. The film I was going to see was in the IMAX-3D format, it was called New York Across the Sea of Time. On the way in they handed out 3D headsets which presumably had LCD-shutters lenses that were synchronised by a little infra-red receiver on the front. This meant the 3D would be in full colour.

The screen itself was huge! This was probably about the biggest IMAX screen in the world. First of all they showed a trailer for the film Everest which was in 2D. The photography was fantastic. It felt like you were looking out through a huge window over the snowy landscape – and it was all accompanied by dramatic orchestral music delivered by a very powerful sound system with thumping sub-woofers! It literally made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end – and this wasn’t even in 3D! Next they showed a few logos and trailers in 3D, and it was very very impressive. The IMAX 3D logo in particular fascinated me – it started out in the distance and the little symbol kind of flew straight at you and stopped just a few inches in front of your nose where you would try and grab at it. It was totally convincing.

The main feature itself was okay – although I was more enthralled with the 3D-ness (there were some great sequences of flying over the streets of New York) than with the film itself. Great things could be done with IMAX-3D – they should definitely make some proper feature films with it. Not too long ones though – by the end of the film I had a splitting headache, which I think was caused by the eyestrain of looking through the flickering 3D glasses as the headache went away as soon as I took them off.

They’re building an IMAX screen in Bournemouth – hopefully it will be as big as the one in New York. And hopefully they’ll show that Everest film on it because I’d really like to see that.

On the way home I popped into a Barnes & Noble, and browsed through some books before returning to the hostel for another nights sleep.


[Back][Contents][Next]

This page was last updated on October 20, 1998

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1